"To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control agression without inficting injury is the Art of Peace" - O-Sensei, "The Art of Peace" by John Stevens.

Leaving aside the issue of translation, I am not sure this supports the economic position (or suggestion) of minimal damage as a moral position held by the Founder. In fact, one could say that it would actually discredit it - since all injury to our opponent is injury to ourselves. Reason, it would seem, dictates that we should seek rather not to injure ourselves at all - right?

Moreover, to be sure, Osensei's unification of the Same and the Other is coming from the philosophies he practiced -- philosophies wherein the subject/object dichotomy was reconciled. These philosophies, I would suggest, cannot act as the "glue" needed to connect an economic statement with a moral position. Economic statements seem to find their support in the "common sense" that comes to us at first glance. A reconciliation of the subject and object comes to us at any place other than the first glance. For example, we might want to say that it is better to break someone's arm than it is to kill them; better to choke them out than to break their arm; better to pin them in some type of a lock than to choke them out; etc. At an economic level, this makes sense to us; it is a type of "common sense." However, economy aside, one is at most seeking the lesser of two evils; one is still dealing with a violation of oneself here. As such, no matter how economical one gets in one's practice, one is still practicing a type of action that first injures our opponent and thus us, and that second denies the Oneness of my being with the being of my opponent.

Anyway, this is a long about way of suggesting that maybe another quote is in order if we want to see if this notion of "minimal damage" can really be attributed to the Founder, his art, his view of Creation, and/of the meaning of Life, etc.